


Pirates of the Caribbean

by satonawall



Category: Glee
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-21
Updated: 2016-05-21
Packaged: 2018-06-09 20:41:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,286
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6922645
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/satonawall/pseuds/satonawall
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Brittany works at Disneyland, and a pirate steals her heart. It should be easy to get it back.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Pirates of the Caribbean

**Author's Note:**

> I started writing this on my phone last summer as a way to pass time during a bus ride, then promptly forgot about it for almost a year and was reminded by the fact that my phone still keeps suggesting 'pirate' as the next word every time I type 'her'.

Brittany was in love with a pirate.

"She's not actually a pirate," Tina said. "I live right next door to her."

"She's a pirate in my heart," Brittany said.

In fact, her pirate was probably currently living inside Brittany’s heart, since she had stolen it the second their eyes met across the distance of the queue. Pirates were like that.

"She just works at Pirates of the Caribbean." Tina's voice sounded tired. She should rest it for the parade even if she didn't actually sing. "You could easily talk to her."

Brittany smiled at her. She was nice, but her eyes became hearts for Winnie-the-Pooh. She clearly knew nothing about awakening love in a pirate. Admittedly, neither did Brittany because her pirate was one of a kind and you couldn't practice for that. But she thought she had a pretty good idea.

Her pretty good idea was called dance. Brittany was so good at dancing that she could have been Elsa or Tinkerbell, but she was Brittany instead and she liked things that other people seemed to think were like fish but actually weren’t, so they’d put her in Blue Lagoon, which was drier than she had thought when she’d heard the name. But when they went out and then in, there was no one who could dance as long as Brittany.

And everyone knew that pirates liked their booty.

Even though Tina wasn't much help with wooing a pirate, she was Brittany's favourite calendar because she and Brittany's pirate talked sometimes and so Brittany knew when her pirate was working even before she stepped into the bus and felt her heart beat quickly around her pirate who was already sitting there talking to her co-pirates.

Knowing when her pirate was working was mostly useful in that it helped Brittany to guess when he pirate would be out to a watering hole to talk loudly about needing a warm rock under her lizard body.

Brittany really wanted to be that rock. She had been told she had a sunny smile.

And she had her plan. It was all going to go so swimmingly that it might as well start as a shipwreck.

She'd asked Tina, and Tina had said that her pirate was planning to go out. So was Tina, but she was just going to see the fireworks with Winnie-the-Pooh so Brittany wouldn't have to avoid Tina's well-meaning advice all night.

She was at the pirate's favourite place early, because real dancers warmed up before the big performance. It was good she was, too, because it gave her the chance to show off her moves to Peacock Girl who Brittany would have thought was cute and had great taste except that one morning when she'd come to wake up Tina, she'd seen her sneak out of the pirate's room. Everyone knew the doors only locked from the outside with a key, so either Peacock Girl was a key thief or then she'd left the pirate vulnerable, and both were bad things.

Neither wrong could really be righted with the power of dance, but Brittany could always try.

She got so into dancing that she forgot her pirate for a moment. Dance had a way of giving her ammonium.

Her favourite song of the week began to play, and Brittany moved onto an empty spot on the dance floor. Sometimes her moves were just so brilliant that they didn't allow for partners.

She spun around and stumbled right into someone.

"Ugh."

Brittany looked up and straight into the pirate's beautiful eyes.

"You're an exception."

The pirate raised her eyebrows. They made a magical half-circle, like the sunset over the sea where her pirate sailed her ship.

"I usually just break the rules."

Brittany took her hand and pulled her to Brittany's empty dancing spot that was no longer empty.

"They really should bend for you. I would."

The pirate gave her a crooked smile and put her hand on Brittany's waist, and then they danced, and danced all of Brittany's favourite dances.

Her pirate was a very good partner.

\---

Brittany woke up warm. Her pirate was cuddling against her side half on top of her.

I'm a rock, she thought as she fell asleep again. I'll be the best warm rock ever.

\---

The next time she woke up, it was still warm but her pirate was no longer by her side but at the kitchen table scrolling through her phone.

"Hi," she said.

"Hi," Brittany said. She stretched on the bed and sat up to look around the room for her shirt. She was pretty sure it was here that she had lost it.

Her pirate smiled at Brittany's face and not her chest, and threw Brittany's t-shirt at her.

"Bold choice," she said, nodding at the My Little Pony shirt.

Brittany smiled. Pirates didn't usually want to talk this much. It made the butterflies in her stomach flap their wings in unison. She'd have to feed them nectar soon enough.

"It helps me see people I don't like."

Her pirate laughed.

"Do you want breakfast?"

The butterflies flapped even more. Pirates only had a little food at a time and they were usually very greedy.

She grinned at the pirate. "Yes please."

\---

Her pirate (she said she was Santana, but pirates often gave wrong names so Brittany wouldn't hold it against her if she wasn't) let her stay awhile before she said she had to meet a friend. Brittany smiled and danced back to her building.

She was pretty sure her pirate still had her heart, but she was feeling so great she couldn't even mind.

\---

The next time she saw her pirate, they were taking the same bus to work.

"Hi, Brittany," her pirate said.

Her nametag said she was Maria. Brittany didn't know why the butterflies suddenly shivered. She had known the pirate wasn't actually Santana.

"Hi," she said. "Who are you going to whisk off onto your ship today?"

Her pirate (not-Santana) laughed and stood closer to her in the crowded bus.

"About ten thousand pig-headed tourists probably."

"I wish I was pig-headed."

Her pirate smiled at her. "I probably wouldn't mind so much if it was you."

Brittany smiled. Maybe it was okay that her pirate was not-Santana if she still said stuff like that to Brittany.

"I would give you all the not-fish if you ate at my table," she said as the bus stopped at their bus stop.

\---

Usually when a pirate stole her heart, Brittany got it back very quickly, mostly because she was good at sneaking aboard ships and pirates always liked company.

This was the first time a pirate had thought to lock their treasure chest. That one book Brittany hadn't really liked was right after all: women were awesome and men were kind of okay.

She hadn't really thought about a new plan when she accidentally tried the usual plan again.

“Hi,” her pirate whispered in her ear as her hands settled on Brittany’s waist.

Brittany stopped dancing. There was too little room for it anyway. And it kind of felt like there was no air either. You couldn’t dance properly if you couldn’t breathe. “Hi.”

“I hoped I’d see you here tonight,” her pirate said.

A few brave butterfly wings began flapping in her belly, and Brittany wondered if the pirate could feel them through her skin where her hands were holding Brittany. (She wished she’d never seen the nametag. It was better to be a happy idiot, and people already thought she was dumb.)

She wanted to punch the butterflies, but she might have accidentally hit her pirate’s hand. “I don’t usually have to hope I’d see myself.”

Her pirate laughed, and Brittany could feel it. “Want to dance again?”

Brittany bit her lip. “There’s no room here to dance properly, and if you don’t dance properly, there’s no point in dancing at all.”

Her pirate’s hand shifted from Brittany’s waist downwards to grasp at Brittany’s hand. Brittany blamed the butterflies for the weird feeling in her stomach. She should have known they would fly right into each other and hurt their heads.

“We could go somewhere else, then?”

More butterflies took flight, and Brittany couldn’t count how many of them crashed because one of her hands was otherwise occupied and so her fingers were busy holding onto her pirate’s hand and couldn’t be used for counting.

She smiled at her pirate, despite the unknown number of injured butterflies inside her.

“I’d like that.”

\---

It took them longer than Brittany had thought it would to end up on her pirate’s bed again. And she’d thought they would be on it less perpendicularly.

It was all because they’d been missing the power of dance, she thought. Dance was magic.

She didn’t mind this, though. Her pirate was holding Brittany’s hand, their arms kept brushing against each other and her pirate kept giving her long and warm looks.

Pirates didn’t usually do any of that, and it was very good for creating more butterflies.

“What?”

Brittany blinked. She’d thought that had just been her inner voice speaking, but apparently her pirate had heard it too.

“Do pirates like butterflies?” she asked. That wasn’t what she’d said, but usually when people used that tone, it meant they had already heard what she’d said.

Her pirate laughed. “I guess. That’s a question I haven’t heard at work yet. Props to your originality, people ask the weirdest things.”

Brittany beamed at her. Usually she didn’t like it when people told her she was weird, but her pirate could call her whatever she wanted as long as she did it with that smile that took all the mean out of everything.

There was a knock on the door.

“I’m not at home!” her pirate yelled, and Brittany pretended that the reason she buried her head against her pirate’s shoulder was to muffle her laughter.

“Very funny, Santana!” shouted a voice from the other side of the door, and Brittany’s laughter died.

She didn’t understand anything. She hated that feeling.

“Go away, Quinn!”

“I’m going to put head lice in your work hat,” was the final threat, but it wasn’t followed with anything else, so it probably meant it was a threat for the future.

“Sorry about that,” her pirate said, flashing a bright smile at Brittany. “That was one of my co-workers. She’s the worst. You two should meet at some point.”

Brittany blinked. She still didn’t understand anything, and the feeling hadn’t become any nicer since it came upon her.

“She called you Santana,” she said.

“I know,” her pirate said. “She doesn’t have the creativity for proper insults.”

Brittany bit her lip. “But I saw your nametag.”

Her pirate frowned, like she didn’t understand anything either. Brittany hadn’t meant for that to be contagious, and she instantly felt bad.

“I broke mine, and it takes forever to get a new one.” Her pirate – maybe-not-not-Santana? – raised an eyebrow. “I told you my name, right? I mean, you definitely told me yours, I remember because after that I could use it without having to say that I’d asked Tina-“

Brittany frowned. “Why would you ask Tina my name when it’s me who’s secretly lost my heart?”

Her pirate – Santana – frowned back. “Because I like to do my reconnaissance before trying to talk to a girl I like and you two are friends?”

She blinked. “But _I_ like you.”

“Well that’s good,” Santana said, “because I spent way too much time at that stupid bar hoping you’d show up not to get at least a proper date out of this.”

Santana’s words were apparently a little magic, because they healed at least the majority of the injured butterflies in Brittany’s stomach. It was heard to speak with all the sudden flapping of wings, but Brittany tried her best.

“I thought I was the one who planned,” she said. “And I thought you were not-Santana.”

“Because of the nametag?” Santana bit her lip, and luckily did not get mad that Brittany had assumed. “You could have asked.”

“I thought you were like other pirates.” Brittany squeezed Santana’s hand. “I’ve got names that weren’t names before.”

“I’m going to-“ The dark tone disappeared from Santana’s voice as quickly as it had come. “Actually, I’m going to thank them for being so wrong, because that means that you’re free to go out with me, right?”

The last of the butterflies got their wings back. “Definitely.”

Santana smiled at her. “Good.”

Brittany didn’t know how long it was, but she liked all the time they spent just looking at each other.

“I probably should have believed Tina when she said you were not a pirate,” she said eventually. “It might have made me happier quicker.”

Santana laughed. “Oh, no, I’m definitely a pirate. I just kidnapped you and you definitely cannot escape until morning.”

She settled more comfortably against Brittany’s side, and it was very easy to let gravity do its thing and lay down on the bed so that Santana’s head rested on her shoulder.

“I think I’m going to survive,” Brittany told her. “You’re uncommonly generous with breakfast, for a pirate.”

“I just found a great treasure,” Santana said, moving so that she could look Brittany in the eye. It looked like a great pre-kissing position. That was probably intentional. “I can afford to be a little generous.”

It did in fact turn out to be a great pre-kissing position and then just a great kissing position, but Brittany could not be distracted so easily.

“It was actually me who found the treasure,” she said later.

Santana laughed against her neck, and that turned out to be a good pre-kissing position, too.


End file.
